I couldn't start a company or get a bank account, but I did use my digital signature.

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NEW YORK—In the shadow of the nearby United Nations, I approached the Estonian consulate this week ready to complete what's been an eight-month journey. I waited this entire time to visit the 6th floor, finalize some paperwork, and leave with a shiny blue box no bigger than a standard envelope. Soon after, it was official.

I was finally an Estonian e-resident, one of the first 10,000 worldwide.

Further Reading

"We have digital identity and digital signing that is equal by law for each and every Estonian citizen and each and every person that lives in Estonia," Rõivas said during a December 2014 event at Stanford University. "If you have a signature that is on your ID card, and you put it to your smart card reader combined with your PIN, and this is legally binding, and this is equal to your handwritten signature, you can do anything with that. We have used this for 10 years now, and we do believe that there are many things we can do."

Estonian ID cards use open source public key-private key encryption (upgraded in 2011 to 2048-bit RSA), which allows government agencies to perform various secure functions online connected with a citizen's identity. These actions include handling financial transactions, issuing public transportation tickets, and maintaining student university admission records among other things. These digital ID cards are standard-issue for all citizens and legal residents.

The e-residency card is a bit different. An e-resident does not carry any of the rights or responsibilities of being an Estonian legal resident, much less a citizen. I can’t vote, nor do I get the travel benefits of being a European Union citizen. The card doesn’t even have my photo on it, but it does give me some benefits that Estonians have already enjoyed for well over a decade. According to the government, I could start an Estonian company in 18 minutes flat. And although it appeared less glamorous, I could now digitally sign legally binding documents.

Estonia hopes to eventually sign up 10 million e-residents by 2025, but obviously only a fraction of that e-residency goal has been met today. A small number of journalists, including Edward Lucas of The Economist and Joshua Keating of Slate, already acquired e-residency cards, but they hadn’t put them to much use as far as I could tell. So while I wasn't sure of everything being an e-resident could entail, I wanted to find out what one of the world’s most digitally forward countries had to offer.

How to become an e-resident

Since May 2015, Estonia has allowed individuals to complete e-resident applications and pay for the card online. The process is relatively simple. First, you have to send a scan of your passport and fill out a lot of predictable information (name, address, etc). Then you declare which Estonian government office, embassy, or consulate you plan on picking up a card at once approved. (Even though I live in California, New York City is actually my nearest Estonian diplomatic presence. Luckily the Ars' annual staff conference was taking place in the Big Apple this year.)

Once that’s out of the way, you get an e-mail like this:

Dear applicant,

Thank you for applying for e-Residency. Your application has been submitted and will be reviewed shortly. You will be notified when the application review process begins. If your application is approved, your e-Resident smart ID-card will be sent to your chosen location. The whole process should take no more than a month. The Estonian Police and Border Guard Board will keep you informed about the application process by sending progress reports to the e-mail address you provided in the application.

About six weeks after my application, I got another e-mail: “Estonian Police and Border Guard Board has granted e-Residency to CYRUS JOHN FARIVAR.”

When I eventually made it to the Estonian consulate, I had more logistics to take care of. I presented my US passport and allowed digital scans of my index fingers to be taken. Then, Consul General Tere Peakonsul Eva-Maria Liimets handed me a welcoming blue box with my ID gleaming out at me. The e-residency packaging looks quite professional, and it reveals an additional five steps to e-Residency along the inside flap:

Your final steps towards e-Residency:

Take your ID-card reader from the slot
Open the reader by sliding into “+” shape
Take your e-Residency card
When using the card, make sure there is contact between the chip and the reader
Go to www.e-estonia.com/welcome

That seemed straightforward enough, but it wasn’t quite so easy. Once I visited the URL, I had to install three different pieces of software: one was the ID-card utility and then two more were items from the App Store. After, I was required to reboot.

In order to test the connection between the smartcard, the reader, and my computer, I popped in my card (in a specific orientation) and plugged it into the USB port on my Mac. I was quickly greeted by repeated errors saying that reader could not find my card. Worse, the instructions did not seem to anticipate such errors—there were no discernible suggestions of what to do if a card was not read. At least the error message was cute.

I put a call out on Twitter and found some guidance within minutes. Estonian tech journalist Ronald Liive and Estonian Information System Authority software tradesman Martin Paljak graciously offered a few suggestions, and soon I was fiddling. Ultimately I tried the ID-card utility, because it seemed that my PIN1 code needed to be reset. Once that was done, I was good to go—the utility app finally recognized me and my card.

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Cyrus Farivar
Cyrus is a Senior Tech Policy Reporter at Ars Technica, and is also a radio producer and author. His latest book, Habeas Data, about the legal cases over the last 50 years that have had an outsized impact on surveillance and privacy law in America, is out now from Melville House. He is based in Oakland, California. Emailcyrus.farivar@arstechnica.com//Twitter@cfarivar